WE SHOULD like to present a heretofore unknown disease, "leukemic xanthomatosis." The condition is not familial or hereditary and is characterized by the following features:
Xanthomatous skin lesions of the disseminated type and normal cholesterol blood levels.
Development of generalized visceral reticuloendotheliosis with increased cholesterol tissue contents, a dense argyrophilic reticulum, and the appearance of foam cells—a histological picture similar to that of Hand-Schüller-Christian disease and its variants.
Deposits of foci of primitive mesenchymal cells in the affected tissues—as commonly seen in leukemia—however, with many of these cells exhibiting a foamy protoplasm due to a high cholesterol content.
Leukemic blood—and bone marrow findings and a fatal course as in leukemia.
Numerous inclusion bodies were found in the organs of the presented case, and a virus was considered as a possible etiological agent.
In the aleukemic forms, the primitive stem cells do not differentiate into blood